The importance of the Sanctuary and the religious celebrations of the Hyakinthia festival connected with it was very high to the population of Lakonia until late antiquity; this can be testified by ancient written sources and inscriptions. The most complete and useful sources at our disposal are Pausanias (3.19.1-5) and Athenaios (4.139d-f, 6.232a). The traveller provides the most important information on the statue and about the throne. From Herodotus (1.69) we learn that Croesus from Lydia donated the money needed in order to drape the statues of Apollo in the mount Thornakas and in Amykles. Other sources contain short references to the cult celebrations that took place in Amyklaion until the Roman period; however they mainly provide information on the connection of the Apollonian with the chthonian cult of the local hero, Hyacinth. Polykrates, for example, mentions in Deipnosophistes that the Laconians celebrated Hyakinthia each summer to honour Hyacinth and Apollo. Finally, in Athenaios (4.173f) there is a mention to the “Hyakinthia Road” a road taken by the festive procession from Sparta to Amykles.
Il. 2.584; Pindarus Pyth. 1.65, 11.32. Nem. 11.34. Isthm. 7.14; Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1297-1299; Thucydides 5.2; Athenaios 4. 138f-140a; Polybius 5.19; Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.11; Strabo 7.1.2, 8.5.1; Pausanias 3.1.3, 3.10.8, 3.16.2, 3.18.7-19.6.